| About this Abstract |
| Meeting |
MS&T24: Materials Science & Technology
|
| Symposium
|
Glasses and Optical Materials: Current Issues and Functional Applications
|
| Presentation Title |
What is the Best Glass Material for Optical Fibres – Soft Glass or Silica? – It Depends |
| Author(s) |
Heike Ebendorff-Heidepriem |
| On-Site Speaker (Planned) |
Heike Ebendorff-Heidepriem |
| Abstract Scope |
Silica is the most abundantly used glass material for optical fibres in a wide range of applications including submarine cable for telecommunication, fibre Bragg grating sensors for structural health monitoring and high power fibre lasers for metal cutting and 3D printing. Soft glasses can be classified into 3 types: heavy metal oxide (e.g. tellurite), fluoride (e.g. ZBLAN) and chalcogenide (e.g. arsenic sulphide). Despite much research and a large variety of attractive optical properties such as mid-infrared transparency and high nonlinearity, they have found so far only niche commercial applications such as supercontinuum generation and high power delivery in the mid-infrared. This talk examines this glass dichotomy, reviewing the impact of glass structure, composition and fabrication of the various glass types on target properties for specific applications. The advantages and challenges of silica and soft glasses for future research and translation to real-world applications are discussed. |